


begging for you to take my hand (wreck my plans, that's my man)

by safeandsound13



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Old Acquaintances, Piercings, Praise Kink, Reunion, Sexual Tension, Smut, Tattoo Artist!Bellamy, based on a tiktok an aquaintance sent to me, is that a tag? now it is, mental breakdown!Clarke, piercer!Bellamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:49:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28435659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safeandsound13/pseuds/safeandsound13
Summary: After the roughest of patches, Clarke decides to get a daring body piercing. She ends up knowing the piercer a bit more intimitately than she'd expected.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 87
Kudos: 385





	begging for you to take my hand (wreck my plans, that's my man)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captainchokemedaddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainchokemedaddy/gifts).



> happy 2021, sorry for always fake deeping it xx

┇

Clarke is fine.

Clarke is fine, and she’s tired of being asked if she’s fine. It might be strange to some people that she’s suddenly ‘lost her way’, but it’s not sudden to her. It’s been a steep, steady decline for years now — the whole thing with her dad, and then finding out about her mom, and then fucking Wells too — and she was bound to break at some point. It doesn’t mean she’s crazy, or fragile, or unstable, or weak. She’s just a tiny bit lost, without these big parts of her that made up more than half of who she was, and she hardly thinks getting a haircut or leaving behind med school or blowing off a few pointless nights out with her boyfriend’s friends are any major red flags. 

Neither is getting a piercing, but apparently that’s where Finn draws the line. He’s worried, she tells herself. She might be fine, just simply in need of some change in her life, something new and exciting, something that can actually make her feel something real for once, but she’s also losing it just a little, so his concerns are completely valid. He’s being a good boyfriend. A good, placating, boring boyfriend. He’s everything she always thought she wanted in a partner, and he picked her over his gorgeous childhood best friend, so she should be happy. Ecstatic. That he cares, that he’s so attentive, that he’s suffocating her. 

It’s cool. She’s totally fine. 

There’s only one tattoo shop in town, and they have time for an appointment exactly fifteen hours after Clarke first decides she wants a piercing (fourteen hours and fifty-five minutes after her mom shares an article on how reality stars with coloring books plastered over their skin are corrupting today’s youth on her Facebook) so the choice is easily made. Finn comes with her, mainly because she drunkenly sold the car her mom bought her for her sixteenth birthday and donated all the money to a charity for a sanctuary for snakes. It seemed fitting at the time. 

Clarke isn’t an vindicative, eye for an eye kind of person usually. It’s just — life has never been this meaningless, and if there’s no point, then what’s the point of forgiveness, of letting go, or moving on? If she has to be miserable, so does everybody fucking else who ruined her life, so does her mom.

A receptionist leads them into one of the backrooms, telling them one of the artists will be with them in a moment. Finn makes a final plea to talk her out of it, and Clarke drowns most of it out while she proceeds to scroll through her Instagram feed, contemplating whether or not she should use up half of her trust fund to get herself one of those Swavaroski vibrators. They look pretty. 

His damp palm folds around her wrist. “...when we have children, what if you want to breastfeed—”

Someone scrapes their throat, cutting off Clarke in the middle of a mirthless snort. _Children?_ Seriously? Who does he think she is? He stopped asking if she was okay after she stopped giving him the answer he wanted. “Actually, you can breastfeed with a nipple piercing just fine,” that same someone says, their voice deep like gravel and distantly familiar, in a way that nags on her to remember where from.

Clarke looks up from her phone then, not expecting to find herself eye to eye with her annoying high school science project partner’s older brother. Her breath catches in the back of her throat, but she covers it up expertly with a small cough. She hasn’t heard from or seen Octavia in years, not after she did that two month retreat in Thailand, decided to wrongly appropriate an entire religion upon finding out the world did in fact _not_ revolve around her and deleted all of her social medias in order to ‘repent’. Let alone Clarke’s spared the girl’s brother a thought for the better half of the past decade. 

Okay, sometimes. She did wonder. Fleeting, temporary thoughts. Stupid thoughts.

He looks different. _Bellamy._ His hair is longer now, all wild curls instead of a short DIY cut, and he’s finally given in to the fact he needs glasses. The golden brown skin left uncovered by his simple black t is covered by a multitude of tattoos. Acts different too. From what Clarke remembers, they used to fight about everything, from how much salt she put on her drive-through fries to why the hell he would do Octavia’s part of their project just because she’d rather be out getting high with her film class buddies. 

She would tell him writing a trivial paper on music affect’s on plantgrowth wasn’t his responsibilty, that she could fix it on her own, and he would always tell her something stupid like ‘ _no, but Octavia is’_ , and the even dumber ‘ _you shouldn’t have to do it on your own_ ’ that played with her heartstrings in completely undecipherable, nerve-wracking ways. 

For three months during her senior year, Clarke liked pushing the boundaries with him, challenging him, seeing how far she could push him before he would break. He never did, but he used to be so easy to rile up, arrogant in a way that implied he was anything but confident. Back then, she didn’t know anyone with a fuse as short as his. He’s calmer now, something about him more certain, maybe mysterious too, even if she might just be romanticising the idea of him. She hardly thinks he remembers her, the way he used to tease her for being a goodie two shoes with a perpetual fear of breaking the rules or disappointing an authority figure in her life or god forbid, doing something _fun_.

Now she knows she was so hyper focused on school and doing good because it distracted her from her father’s rapidly deteriorating health, and unlike her father’s illness, it was something she had control over. Bellamy thought it was funny, poked fun at her stubbornness and dedication, but looking back on it, she thinks it’s more embarrassing she tried so hard to prove herself all the time. For those few months, it was nice, to have someone who didn’t baby her, who saw her as an actual person and not senator Griffin’s daughter or the poor girl with the sick father. It was a nice distraction, but it’s obviously humiliating it held such an impact for her when she’s pretty certain he only put up with her for the sake of Octavia’s chances of getting into a decent college. 

Clarke actually _hopes_ he doesn’t remember her, but she also promised she would stop lying to herself. Part of this new, better version of herself and all. 

His smile is still nice, she realizes, when it slowly splits across his face. His eyes flit between her and Finn, his previous sentence still hanging in the air heavily around them before offering, “I’m guessing you’re my two o’clock?”

Obviously, he doesn’t remember her. That, or he’s a very good actor. His face is a blank slate of perfect neutral politeness. Of course, she’s not going to back out now. That would imply she cares, that she recognizes him well enough to be embarrassed. “Yeah,” she agrees, tongue darting out to wet her lips, mouth suddenly feeling a little dry. She tells herself it’s from surprise. “My name’s Clarke, this is Finn.”

“I’m her boyfriend,” Finn adds, for no other reason than what Clarke assumed was the byproduct of her own imagination, the inexplicable tension growing thick in the air. Or maybe he’s getting weird about someone who’s not him seeing her breasts again. 

Bellamy gives Finn a short jut of his chin in recognition of the fact he spoke, but his brown eyes remain on Clarke. She’s stupid for even thinking it, but there’s a gleam there she recognizes all too well. The same gleam he used to get when she would go on tangents about _no, that’s not how meiosis works, actually_ before realizing he’d said it wrong on purpose to piss her off. “I assume you’re the one getting pierced?”

Her cheeks heat despite the fact she’s got nothing to be embarrassed about. People get their nipples pierced all the time. It’s not weird, and although she’s got a great rack, it doesn’t have to be hypersexualized at all times. The whole dancing around the fact she wants to get that particular part of her anatomy pierced is what’s making her whole body thrum with anticipation. She hasn’t decided if it’s the good or the bad kind of anticipation yet. 

“I am,” Clarke squeaks out, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears. She’s suddenly overcome with nerves at the thought of being half naked in front of her teenage crush. Objectively, she knows she looks great, but there is still a possibility he’ll be grossed out because he remembers her as the same eighteen year old always sitting at his kitchen table and eating his food while complaining about her math tests. 

“Isn’t there a female piercer?” Finn asks suspiciously, peering back out into the shop as if he can materialize one out of thin air. Not that it matters, considering she’s bi and most definitely can be attracted to girls too. Not _too,_ but in a general way of speaking she is attracted to all genders, including but not limited to Bellamy’s. 

“Not at the moment,” Bellamy casually says with an equally nonchalant half-shrug of his shoulders. He stares Finn down, completely unfazed. “Now if you don’t mind—” He points at the sign on the door reading ‘ _maximum number of persons 2_ ’ over his shoulder, with a smirk that Clarke realizes still has the same effect it did on her years ago. A very bad effect. “Fire department’s orders.”

Finn either didn’t notice the four customers who left the closed room before them, or he doesn’t want to risk an argument with someone who could obviously take him because he presses a dry kiss to her mouth and leaves without making any further fuss. 

“So,” Bellamy starts, and her heart skips a beat before it speeds up just a little, thinking that this is going to be the moment he confesses he knows her, until he adds, “You want both nipples pierced, or just one?”

She refuses to be nervous any longer. So what he used to tease her about Wells’ crush on her, and she used to laugh stupidly hard at his jokes that weren’t even that funny? So what she used to sit in the dim light of his kitchen late in the evening on school days and listen to his terrible work stories, if she used to dress for her and Octavia’s study dates with him in mind, if she wished all his girlfriends dead? It’s all in the past now. Clarke forces her face into something poised and confident, answering him, “Both.”

“Okay, good,” he tells her, in a polite professional way, which shouldn’t bug her as much as it does. Bellamy turns around to get his equipment ready, and the only sound is the tinkering of his tools and a rock radio channel playing lowly in the shop from behind the closed doors.

“Sorry about him,” Clarke comments idly, scraping her throat as she starts to shrug off her jacket, hoping to break the silence that’s formed in between them. It’s not awkward, but it’s not comfortable either. 

Half a chuckle rumbles from deep in his chest, her eyes fixated on a spot in between his shoulder blades as he works. “I feel more sorry for you. Aren’t you dating him?”

She swallows hard. “Kind of.” 

He finally turns around, a small metal tray in his hands, one of his eyebrows quirked. “How do you kind of date somebody?”

Clarke tilts her head slightly, considering it as she climbs on top of the table that reminds her off the doctor’s office. “I mean — he really liked me.” That doesn’t seem good enough of a reason to date someone, even she knows that, so she tries to explain it further, “And, Finn, he’s.. easy. So I just went along with it.” She adds a shrug, for good measure. At least he meant she wasn't alone.

He’s put the tray down on the trolley beside the table, pulling two black gloves from a dispenser on the wall before sinking down on the swivel stool right in front of her. “Just going along with it? That doesn’t really sound like the Clarke I know.”

She narrows her eyes at him, more to keep from making a pleasantly surprised face than because she’s actually mad. “You do remember me?”

“Of course I remember you,” Bellamy confirms, giving her a weird look. “It’s been what? Seven years?” He huffs with a shake of his head and then laughs a little, eyes glossed over with the memory, glittery from amusement. “God, Octavia hated your guts.”

  
Clarke rolls her eyes. “The feeling was mutual.”

He grins a little, bright enough to make her glad she’s sitting down. “It showed.” It widens as he studies her, leisurely, his gaze setting her skin on fire everywhere it goes. “Shame about your hair.”

“My hair?” Her eyebrows jump, her pulse quickening irrationally. 

“You cut it,” he states, as if obvious that was what he was talking about.

“Yeah, a few months ago.” She ignores the fact he has opinions about her hair, and instead juts her chin at his, messily crafted curls falling over his forehead. “Yours looks better like this though.”

Bellamy smirks, cocky in a way that makes her blood boil. “Thanks for noticing.”

She scoffs, forehead crinkling. “I didn’t _notice_ like that.”

His smirk only grows, although he does a terrible job at trying to stifle it as he stares her down. “Like what?”

Her cheeks heat despite the fact she wills them not to, brushing him off with another roll of her eyes, “You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” he relents with a tilt of his head, then, after a brief pause long enough to make her think he’s dropped it, going back to a full blown cocky smirk and something that’s not quite a wink but something resembling it close enough to make annoyance flare up inside of her. “You definitely noticed like that, though.”

Clarke decides to glare at him, knowing that if she argues she’ll be agreeing in what kind of different than regular way she could have looked at him, before swiftly changing the subject. “How’s your sister?”

“I think she’s doing fine,” he answers dismissively, his face falling quickly at the mention of her. He tosses the gloves into the tray with his supplies, shrugging a little, his brave face returning just as quick. It makes her suspect it’s the old kind of hurt, still painful, but in a dull, detached kind of way. “Part of her spiritual cleanse or whatever was apparently to sever all her connections to her old self, and I guess that included me.”

“I’m sorry,” she replies genuinely, her eyes softening. Not because she’s particularly sorry Octavia isn’t in his life, but because she knows how much she meant to him.

“It’s okay,” Bellamy declares, offering her a smile real enough to let her know it truly is okay. “I was depressed about it for a while, but we email now.” He laughs a little, nervous and nonchalant, and she joins him because it’s so nice to hear it after so long. “LIke every two months.” The corner of his mouth lifts, meeting her gaze. “And I’ve actually found out that I’m okay with that. And that I am this whole other person besides her brother.” She sends him a proud smile, a gesture which he briefly returns before he clears his throat, somehow quieter than before, “You can take off your shirt now, by the way.”

Clarke nods, once, crossing her arms over her stomach to take a hold of the hem of her top. To dispel the awkward tension suddenly growing around them, she jokingly presses, “You’re not going to take me out on a date first?”

“Cute,” he deadpans, then shakes his head lightly. “How does the boyfriend feel about this?”

She rolls her eyes, lifting the shirt over her head. She tosses it onto the table beside her, smoothing over her hair. “He was ready to put me on suicide watch when I first told him.”

Bellamy inclines his head and raises his brows as if to say ‘really?’, but she just shrugs, reaching behind her to unhook her bra. Her nerves make her fingers tremble, so her first few attempts fail. Suddenly he’s lifting off his stool and stepping into her space, close enough so she can feel the words vibrate from his chest when he mutters, “Here, let me help.”

He smells incredibly nice. Like expensive cologne, clean boy sweat, something earthy, and somehow still that same old laundry detergent his mom used to always use. Clarke hardly gets any time to protest, his warm fingers on her back, his arms moving against hers as he works. Body heat radiates off him, making her grip tighten around the edge of the table. 

Bellamy unclips her bra after one try, a single try that somehow feels like an hour and a second at the same time, sniffing as he takes a step back. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, meeting her eyes for barely a second before he averts his eyes. “There,” he declares, voice rougher than a minute ago. 

“Thanks,” she replies after a beat, heart pounding loudly against her ribcage as she sits there, just kind of stupidly holding the cups of her bra up to her chest. She tilts her head at the table, trying to get back some semblance of control over the situation she’s found herself in. "Do I lay down?”

“No, I gotta mark them first,” he directs, reaching for the black gloves. He puts them on, fishing a sharpie from a cabinet by the wall. It’s silent until he appears back in front of her, sinking down onto the stool and wheeling it as close as possible. “For the record, I think it’s totally cool you’re stepping out of your comfort zone to do this.” He finally looks back up at her from under his unfairly long lashes, hair falling into his almost reverent brown eyes as he offers her half a boyish grin. “But then again, I’ve always thought you were pretty badass.”

Clarke scoffs, as if her pulse isn’t fluttering erratically, as if her stomach isn’t flipping like crazy every second he continues to look at her, as if she isn’t absolutely desperate for him, even now. “Really? Even while making fun of my Bentley.”

He laughs, deep and throaty, her chest glowing with something warm at still being able to get one of those out of him. “To be fair, no sixteen year old needs a Bentley.” He snorts, dry, uncapping and recapping the sharpie to what she suspects is a ploy to keep his hands busy. Some things never change. “In fact, I think nobody needs to lay down that much money for a car they use as a glorified grocery cart.”

“If it makes you feel better, I sold it.”

He hums shortly, considering it. “Same reason you’re getting this piercing?”

She nods, looking up at the ceiling. Her eyes follow the motion of the fan, round and round. Monotonously, having gone over and over and over it, the reasons for countless arguments with the people who supposedly care about her, she lists, “And I cut my hair. Cut out my mom and most of my friends. Dropped out of med school. Convinced myself everything is okay in the name of finding myself.”

He pops the cap onto the back of the sharpie, sending her a pointed look. “Well, at least you didn’t drop out and move to Asia as a white girl to find ‘ _your roots’_.”

Clarke actually laughs — a genuine, loud, unashamed, easing laugh — something she feels like she hasn’t done in months. For some reason it makes it easier to take her next breath. “There’s still time on my mental breakdown schedule.”

He returns her smile, and then he softens, eyes searching her face slowly. Finally, he remarks, “You don’t need to do drastic things to feel something, you know.”

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly, holding his gaze. 

His tongue darts out to wet his lips, giving his head an imperceptible shake as his eyes rake hers for a second longer. She wishes she knew what he was thinking right now. A second longer, and he’s reaching for the straps on her arms, slowly dragging them down before he presses, gravelly, “You just need the right person.”

Her breath hitches in the back of her throat, which she tries to cover up by swallowing tightly. The way he’s looking at her has her mouth dry up, her palms turn damp against the lacy material of her bra. Time seems to stretch on, the moment only breaking when she watches his leisurely grin widen slowly. “Preferably a therapist.”

Clarke removes one of her arms from the straps, starting on the next slowly. She’s stalling, for no good reason. “I think an easy fix like a nipple piercing will do just fine.”

There’s a light chuckle, and then his signature, “Whatever the hell you want.” He gives her another jut of his chin, probably wanting to get the show on the road. She’s just a customer after all, and he’s probably fully booked. “You ready?”

She considers it, taking in a deep breath. Then she finds herself not nearly as nervous as ten minutes ago, and figures she’s made it this far, so she lifts the bra off her chest. “Yeah,” she agrees, decisively, discarding it beside her shirt.

Bellamy gives no visible reaction to coming face to face with her breasts, although his jaw clenches in concentration as he studies them, the cotton swab he uses to disinfect them cold enough to make her flinch briefly. Clarke can tell that a splotchy pink flush is starting to cover the pale skin of her collarbone and neck, but prays he won’t call her out on it. If he does, she’ll just blame it on the pain she’s anticipating. 

“They’re going to have to wake up,” he tells her with what she guesses is a playful smirk, before he flicks one of them, sending a thrill up her spine. Clarke freezes, feeling her centre grow damp without her permission, which is a bad thing. A very bad thing. He’s just doing his job.

Bellamy expertly marks the placement on the first nipple with the sharpie, and his hands, god, his fucking hands, even gloved, have always had a more than unfair amount of impact on her. When she was a teenager she was so sexually repressed she didn't even realize why she’d be horny after a project session at the Blake house accidentally spent entirely watching Bellamy play Tomb Raider, but now, God, _now_ she knows better. Now she knows exactly why her cunt is throbbing longingly as she watches him work. 

“Good girl,” he mutters absently, pinching the other one, so full of concentration, so focused and completely professional, she’s not even sure he’s noticing what he’s doing to her. She _is_ sure she’s dripping at this point. 

Bellamy carefully checks to make sure they’re even on both sides, before tapping the side of her thigh, breaking her from her reverie with a little jolt. The imagery of his hands near her breasts is going to haunt her forever. “You can lay down now,” he says, amused, when she just blinks at him, dazed. 

She does as he says, pressing her knees together briefly to rid herself of some of the tension that’s built between her legs. Her breathing has turned fast and shallow, her eyes widening as he picks up the first needle, forceps in his other hand. Nerves start to overtake her again, and he quietly reminds her, “Don’t forget to breathe, okay?”

She holds his gaze for a second longer, drawing strength from it for some idiotic reason before slightly nodding. He pinches the nipple once more, before clamping it with the forceps, and Clarke focuses on the Cerberus tattoo on the inside of his forearm, bracing herself for impact as he pierces the first one. For a split second there’s unbearable, white hot pain, and then it’s over. 

There’s some fumbling for a moment as he gets the barbell into her nipple, and then he smiles down at her, eyes gleaming boyishly, making her already adrenaline infused pulse speed up and come to an immediate halt before picking back up. Her body’s going through it. “Not so bad, right?”

“Not so bad,” she agrees, hoarsely, watching him immediately move on to the nipple closest to him even though she’s still reeling from the first one. It’s best to get it over with as quick as possible, she figures.

”Deep breath,” Bellamy reminds her, authoritative in a quiet way, next needle ready. She takes a sharp inhale, and before she knows it the stabbing pain’s back. The second time somehow seems worse, but it disappears twice as quickly, just leaving both nipples throbbing dully. 

“Good job,” he compliments her, like it’s no big deal, when he’s done wrestling the second barbell on. Now standing, he smiles down at her, and Clarke feels lightheaded, a warmth spreading from the centre of her chest to the tips of her fingers. She hasn’t felt like this is in so long, she’s not sure what to do with herself.

Bellamy takes off his gloves, throwing them in the trash before returning to her with some gauze. She sits up carefully, groaning a little when gravity proves to be more straining on her newly pierced nipples than anticipated. His hand folds around her bare shoulder to support her the last few inches up, chuckling a little. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Clarke answers, just a little shakily, watching him as his warm fingers delicately tape the gauze to her breasts, heavy tension crackling in the air with this weirdly intimate gesture, before he finally reaches for her bra. Their fingers brush as she takes it from him, their eyes meeting briefly. His brow furrows, a look in his eyes she doesn’t recognize, reminding her he could be a completely different person now, that she doesn’t know him, and he doesn’t know her. It’s a sobering thought. Bellamy turns away from her to let her get dressed, busying himself with cleaning up his supplies. 

After she clasps her bra on the first hook to make sure the pressure is to a bare minimum, and tugging her top back on over her head, she lightly clears her throat, sliding off the table. “All done.”

“Cool,” he says, after turning around, flinching because even he knows he’s being awkward. They’re _both_ being awkward. Something in the air has shifted, and she doesn’t even know why. 

Clarke just kind of stares at him dumbly, not sure where to take this now. “I’ll go to the front desk.” She bites her lip, brushing her hair behind her ear, not sure why she’s trying to postpone the inevitable. Shrugging her jacket on, she adds, “And pay.”

First, he nods, in recognition of the fact she said something, then curses lowly under his breath. “Hey,” Bellamy almost pleads, fingers grasping her wrist before she can turn completely away. “You’re not fine, and until you recognize that it won’t get better, okay?” He sniffs, letting go of her wrist to cross his arms over his chest, lifting his shoulders. A dark look shutters over his eyes, and then it’s gone again, his face softening, his tone resigned. “Believe me, I’ve been there.”

An aching pressure forms in her chest, but she pushes it aside, forcing herself to smirk at him. “Are these your usual aftercare suggestions?”

He holds out a pamphlet for her with a raise of his eyebrows, completely unfazed as he instructs, “Come back any time, if you feel like anything might be off.” 

The sentence feels unfinished, like there’s more he wants to say, or perhaps a double meaning to it, but he doesn’t elaborate, so Clarke just nods. She takes the list of instructions from him, tucking it away into the pocket of her jacket. She glances up at him one more time before making her way over to the door. Her fingers fold around the door handle, waving at him over her shoulder with her free hand. “It was nice to see you again, Bellamy.”

He snorts in a way that’s somehow attractive, and when she looks back at him he’s leaning against the table with his hip, arms crossed over his chest as he knowingly smirks at her. “The pleasure was mostly mine.”

Her legs suddenly feel like jelly, and yet she still manages a fairly confident, “I know it was.”

Bellamy raises his eyebrows at her, challengingly, but before he can say any more, an arm wraps around her shoulders. “Ready to go, babe?”

She withholds from rolling her eyes just in time, waving at Bellamy again before letting Finn tug her over to the front desk. She has a feeling this won’t be the last she sees of him anyway.

┇

Six weeks and the rough start of a lot of personal growth later, she’s back at his parlor. A girl whose name tag reads Emori and has a tiny skull tattooed right over her cheekbone offers to help her along, but Clarke tells her she’s waiting for Bellamy. 

"A-ha,” the girl smirks, sort of ominously, her nose ring glinting brightly in the overhead lights as she goes back to her clipboard. “Of course you do.”

Clarke just gives her kind of a weird look in response, taking a seat in the waiting area as she starts to wonder if maybe she’s not the only girl to show up back here to see the flirtatious, sexy piercer again. From what she remembers, the little he allowed her to know and the lot she found out stalking him on various social media platforms, he used to be the biggest slut. 

It really should make this easier.

“You’re back,” Bellamy notes, just a little breathless, when he comes back up to the front desk with a client after a few minutes, finally noticing her. There’s mostly surprise in his eyes, but also something a lot more like intrigue. 

She shrugs, half-heartedly, lifting her backpack into her lap as she quirks an eyebrow at him. Her face remains the epitome of nonchalance, even though her stomach is literally a dark pit of anxiety. It’s not rejection she fears, it’s putting herself out there for possibly no reason at all. Feelings make her uncomfortable. “You did say ‘anything that might be off’.”

He smirks, which is good, and familiar, and not making anything between them weird like she was afraid it would. “What, no chaperone this time?”

She purses her lips. “We broke up.”

Clarke can’t read the muted expression on his face, her eyes instead following the sharp line of his jaw as he nods, turning to tap the desk once to get Emori’s attention. His back looks really nice in his dark henley, nice and strong and like it would be broad enough to cover her completely. He tells his co-worker something entirely too low for Clarke to overhear, and then tilts his head at the backroom for her to follow him. 

She tosses her backpack in the corner as soon as the door closes behind them, running a hand through her hair as she looks around the room. It’s still mostly the same, even if everything feels completely different now. “Thanks for the aftercare advice by the way.”

“Glad to see you’re doing better,” Bellamy expresses, genuine with just a smidge of pride as he leans against the counter in the back. There’s a beat before he adds, semi-prodding, “Want to take off your shirt so I can take a look?”

Her fingers reach for the hem of her camisole immediately, ignoring the little thrill of excitement coursing through her veins. “Definitely.”

  
There’s a gleam in his eye when she says it, and she bites down on her lip to keep from smirking. He might be on to her. Which is totally fine. It’s not like she can draw out the truth much longer. 

Clarke hops onto the exam table before unhooking her bra, a front clasp this time because _kill me once_ and at all, letting it drop into her lap. He tentatively closes the distance between them, studying her breasts extensively. It’s taking every bit of her concentration and willpower not to squirm under his gaze while her centre slowly grows damp, but eventually even he comes to the conclusion that, “These look okay.”

“Okay?” She echoes, scoffing mockingly as a smirk splits across her face. “That’s going in the top three worst responses I’ve gotten after taking my shirt off.”

He looks up at her with suspicious, narrowed eyes, as if he’s waiting for a bunch of camera men to run out and tell him it was all a joke. “They’re not infected?”

They’ve actually healed completely. Quite nicely, if she does say so herself. Clarke shrugs, cutely, ignoring the fact she’s half-naked in front of him and he hasn’t jumped her yet. Her ego is really too fragile to keep taking blows like this. “I _did_ do two years of med school, so.”

His eyes drift back down to her breasts before moving back up to her eyes, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down visibly. His brain seems to short-circuit, giving her a little shake of his head. “Are you coming onto me?”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Does the door lock?”

Bellamy crushes his lips against hers before she can even register he’s leaning in. Her palms anchor into his chest, quickly lifting herself closer to him. His fingers weave into her hair as the kiss grows more and more desperate, her body writhing against his, bare breasts pressed into his hard chest, piercings creating a friction so delicious she gasps hungrily into his mouth. She hasn’t had a chance to try them out yet, focusing on letting them heal, but so far she’s a fan. 

Her hips roll up against his waist, chasing out some thoroughly needed release, his tongue lapping against her lips as he drinks in each and every one of her needy breaths. His fingers tighten in her hair briefly, the other hand on the side of her bare thigh, the responding moan that’s drawn from her lips involuntarily making him pull away. 

“So nothing’s off?” He looks down again, just to make sure, brushing her hair back from her face with a pensive, borderline concerned look. 

She rolls her eyes, spreading her knees further so she can pull him even closer, her shorts riding up painfully in the process. Being within reach of getting what she’s wanted for the better part of a decade has wounded her so tightly she’s walking a tightrope of arousal and control. “Hopefully our clothes.”

“One sec,” he promises with another lingering kiss, and then another, before making his way over to the door to turn the lock. On his way back, one of his big hands reaches for the collar of his henley right below the base of his neck, pulling it off his broad frame in one smooth tug. 

Clarke bites down on her lip, blue eyes drinking in his well-decorated torso greedily. It’s not like he was bad looking back in high school, but this — Jesus Christ, _this_. It’s working for him. “God, you look so fucking hot with those tattoos.”

Suddenly he’s back in front of her, instantly putting his mouth back on hers as his hands fold underneath her thighs, dragging her closer to him. He’s hard against the confines of his jeans, rubbing up against her centre absolutely tantalizingly as her teeth lightly nip at his lower lip. Bellamy starts kissing down her cheek, her chin, panting hot breaths against her neck as he consumes it with his mouth. 

A rough hand palms her breast, thumb seeking out her nipple to find it hard and peaked. He lets out a tiny sigh against her flushed skin, as if he's been thinking about this ever since the last time. “These are unbelievable,” he murmurs against the rise of her collarbone, which she’s not even sure is for her benefit, as his free hand comes up on her other breast. "I hope you know that."

Bellamy sucks her nipple into his mouth without warning and it’s so sensitive she swears she nearly comes on the spot, her fingers finding purchase by gripping onto his hair as a strangled sound falls from her kiss-bitten lips. Her chin tips upward, her spine arching towards him, begging for more, more, more. He nips at the fleshy part of her breast just above her piercing before dragging his mouth up to her ear, hot breath making the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight, “You sound so pretty when you moan for me.”

Instead of answering, which seems impossible as her mind is mostly static at this point, she lifts her ass from the table, rubbing herself against his hardness. His hand snakes in between them to pop open the button of her shorts, fingers making their way into her panties to delve in between her folds. 

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he grumbles, immediately pushing two fingers inside of her, and all she’s capable of is tugging him closer and peppering soft pleasured moans against his mouth to keep him from talking. More praise, and she might combust. 

Clarke helps push her shorts further down so he has some more freedom, his fingers pumping out of her as his thumb teases her clit expertly. It doesn’t take long for her to reach the edge. His name is a broken moan spilling from her pink lips into his mouth as she comes, her entire body tightening and her lungs stuttering as pleasure washes over her. 

Bellamy pulls back, brutally serving the kiss as his eyes roam across her face, taking in the view of her probably way too messy hair, red, wet mouth and parted lips, and heavily heaving chest. She struggles to look up at him, blue eyes soft, her breathing still more than shaky. 

He kisses her again, feather soft, combing her damp hair back from her face as he takes his time exploring her mouth, letting her come down slowly. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he mutters, nosing her cheek as her eyes flutter shut. The confession strangely alights her chest with something too fond and warm for the situation they’re currently in, so she promises herself she’ll overanalyze it later. Bellamy presses more kisses down her face and throat, paying thorough attention to her piercings until taking a slow path down her soft stomach, until she’s burning up all over again, her skin hot and tight, her head swimming with both enjoyment and frustration.

Clarke squirms when he nips at the thin waistband of her panties, all of it growing to be too much, her entire body covered with a thin layer of perspiration. “Bellamy, please.”

“Listen to you,” he practically marvels, mouthing at her throbbing pussy through the fabric. Her pulse quickens with an unimaginable speed, not sure she can take this any longer. “Being so good for me.”

Tired of waiting, her fingers reach out for the button of his jeans, seeking to undo it as quickly as possible. She only fumbles for a second before managing to pop it open, hungrily dipping inside to grasp his hard cock with her tiny fingers, freeing it from his boxers. He’s thick and long and impossibly hard, precum leaking from the head. For a moment, Clarke’s spirit leaves her body. 

”I fucking knew it,” she rasps with a victorious grin, licking her palm before bringing it back down to his length, stroking him leisurely. He feels so good in her hand, so solid and warm, she can only imagine what he’ll feel like once she gets him exactly where she wants him. 

“How could you?” Bellamy questions with a wrecked chuckle, fingers digging into her thighs, muscles in his neck straining. 

She flicks her thumb over the tip with a smirk, enjoying the way he jerks into her hand and curses low under his breath. “Just a feeling.”

He swats her hand away, meeting the teasing glint in her eyes with a stern look as he scolds without much heat, “I’m not going to last, princess” 

The old nickname instantly sparks something violently selfish inside of her, taking what she wants. Clarke leans forward to crash her mouth back onto his, wet and dirty, fingernails biting into his shoulders before dragging meanly down his chest. “Fuck me already,” she whispers, huskily, nipping at his bottom lip. 

His eyes darken to a near black as he drinks her in, not hesitating for another moment as he reaches for his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. He toes off his boots and socks before kicking his jeans off completely, along with his boxers. While he busies himself with the condom, Clarke makes work of her own shorts and panties, lifting her hips to push them down.

His wallet lands on the table with a loud thud, and she’s only got one foot out of her shorts before he’s back pressed up against her. Roughly, he spreads her legs, wrapping them around his back as his hard cock slides over her wet slit. She’s never wanted anyone inside of her this badly. It’s maddening. 

Bellamy’s eyes walk back down her body, taking in each inch with a reverence she can’t quite put into words, lingering on the two silver barbells in her nipples for a second longer than the rest. In a way, they’re his marks, and she wants, _needs_ more of them. 

His cock prods at her entrance before pushing inside at once. Her walls flutter around him involuntarily, trying to get used to his size, although he doesn’t give her much time to adjust. The first stroke is slow, the second less. He slips out once, but easily thrusts back inside, her walls slick with her own arousal. 

One of her hands grasps into his hair, the other on the table behind her to help hold herself up. When his teeth skim her jaw before smoothing over the spot with a soft kiss, she realizes she owes him the same courtesy he gave her, not just because he was brave enough to say it, but because nothing else has ever been more true. He changes the angle slightly, the next trust making her mouth open in a silent moan. When she halfway catches her breath, she rasps, “I’ve wanted you since I was eighteen.”

His fingers tighten around her hips with a bruising force, nailing them down to the table as he growls against her breast, slamming his hips against hers with a force that nearly makes her collapse entirely. His heated gaze meets hers, threads of lust in there, but most of all something more, something undefined, something old and new at the same time, something making every second of this absolutely fucking amazing. 

Clarke’s eyes screw shut tightly, the grip on his hair probably tightening in a painful way as she seeks out some sort of anchor. The pleasure feels like a thick, heavy curtain, completely covering her body, inflamed with desire and longing and so much adoration. Her teeth slide over her bottom lip to keep her from doing anything more than hum breathily, the thought they’re in a busy parlor shop in bright daylight briefly flashing somewhere in the back of her mind.

Her hand trails down his heated neck, his smooth shoulder, scouting the grooves and rises of his chest, shortly tracing the portrait of Medusa just above his belly button stretching up to his sternum, before flying out to dig her nails into his ribs on a particularly hard thrust. His fingers let off one of her hips to palm her neck, his thumb digging into the little dent in her chin to urge her to open her mouth for him as he leans down to kiss her again. Her arm drapes around his neck to pull him closer as she loses herself in the feel of him, now entirely dependent on Bellamy to hold her up. 

Bellamy’s hand leaves her neck to take her small hand off his ribs, guiding it down and encouraging her to rub the swelling nub at the apex of her thighs, sending little sparks of pleasure into her bloodstream. All it takes is for him to reach up, one more pinch of her oversensitive nipple. The sensation of her orgams ripplies through her core, drenching his cock with her pleasure as her toes clench in her converse, a tightening surging across her chest and knocking the breath from her lungs, temporarily making her forget how to breathe.

He falls over the ledge shortly after her, although Clarke isn’t in the right state of mind to experience it fully, only registering the string of soft, stunted breaths and the stiffening of his movements as she comes back down to earth. Her centre grows even warmer than before, his sweaty forehead pressed against her collarbone as they both collect their breaths. 

After a moment he presses a kiss to her pulsepoint before back off her, going to discard the condom in the nearest trash can. She slides her panties and shorts back up over legs, taking her bra from him as he holds it out for her. In the meantime, he’s put on his boxers and jeans, giving her a weirdly warm look that kind of just only makes her want to go for a second round. 

“I’m going to have to do the worst walk of shame of my life in a minute,” Clarke only half jokes, pushing her arms back through the straps of her red bra, clipping it back together at the front.

“It was worth it though,” he presses, and despite the fact he just fucked her brains out, there’s still a question lingering in his voice. 

She wraps her arm back around his shoulders, pulling him close enough so she can crush her mouth back to his, kissing until they’re both panting all over again. “It definitely was.”

Bellamy blinks down at her, dazed, his hands absentmindedly stroking up and down her bare sides. “You know I had the biggest crush on you back then, right?”

Her eyes widen on his. That he wanted her back then, lusted after her, thought about bending her over the kitchen table, sure. Hormones and all. That he liked her? That he actually enjoyed working on a high school biology project with her? Found the same secret thrill in arguing over absolutely nothing as she did? “No way. You despised everything I was.”

“I did,” he concedes, tugging on a strand of her hair playfully before pushing it behind her ear. “At the start. And then I just ended up hating myself for liking you despite all of that,” he nods along to every sentence, a layer of self-deprecation interwoven with each word, “and then I hated myself even more for never making a move. It was an endless cycle of self-loathing.” 

Clarke swallows, her tongue dipping out to wet her lips. It takes her another second to form the words out loud. “Why didn’t you?”

“You had a lot going on.” He lifts a shoulder, nonchalantly, as if it’s just common sense. And maybe it is. “And you were about to go off to college. I was working three jobs to make ends meet. It just—” His jaw clenches briefly, giving her a resigned smile. “It didn’t seem like it was our timing.”

He noticed. He did notice. She smirks knowingly, butting her nose into his jaw as she lets out a mocking gasp. “And you were scared of being rejected by an eighteen year old brat with a superiority complex and a Bentley.”

His eyebrows raise, arms circling around her waist, squeezing her tight. “Seriously. I would’ve done it just for the car.”

She tips her head back to look at him, very judgemental. “What happened to ‘glorified grocery cart’?”

“I would have definitely changed that,” Bellamy insists, making her believe he once upon a time also spent a lot of time imagining less than amical things about the two of them. “We would’ve driven around each night and taken a road trip every weekend. And during the summer we could’ve gone on a longer one, go further away, see Mount Rushmore, maybe vandalize the property a little.”

She smiles, absent. “Sounds nice.” Sometimes it’s hard, to think of the roads not taken, of who she might have been now, where she might have been. None of that would’ve changed what her mother did, or would’ve given her back Wells, or saved her father, or taken away the hurt she still feels every day just breathing. It would’ve been nice though, to have someone in her corner. But, she’s better now, although not completely fine just yet, and all in all, she thinks this is a pretty great spot to end up in. 

He clears his throat, uncomfortable. “You still have a lot going on.” It feels like he’s giving her an easy out, which is so like him it makes her chest ache. She doesn’t need it though. 

“I do,” Clarke verifies, mock-solemnly, with a dip of her head to the side. The last few weeks, no, months, maybe even years, have sucked, to put it lightly. Since she last saw him she’s started journaling, and seeing a therapist, and eating more than two goldfish crackers at 3 am, and she’s not cured by any means, but she’s doing better. And she likes him, she’s always liked him, and she’s finally allowing herself to feel like she deserves to feel any semblance of happy emotions again. That she deserves more than punishing herself, not allowing herself to do more than go through the motions. “Most of them are shitty things though.” Her fingers play with the curls at the nape of his neck, meeting his uncertain gaze as one of the corners of her lips quirks up. “So I would really, _really_ like just one good one.”

It takes a beat, and then his voice is kind of rough, kind of scratchy when he clarifies, “You want me to be that thing?”

It’s kind of exhilarating and scary at the same time. Wanting things. “That person.”

Bellamy inhales sharply, as if caught off guard, then shakes it off, grinning at her like an idiot. “If you promise never to get any piercings without me.”

She stifles a laugh. “I thought we’d established I don’t need a chaperone."

“That was before you fucked your piercer.”

A little considerate noise in the back of her throat, before she wonders, “Are you the jealous type?”

He pinches her nipple through her bra, sending another thrill of pleasure up her back as he gives her a dark look, his brown eyes nearly black. “What do you think?”

Desperate to show him two can play this game, she answers with a coy smile, and, “I think you’d like to know I’m growing out my hair.” 

He lets out a hum of approval, his eyes straying to take in her still relatively short hair, one of his hands coming up to smooth over the side of it. There's an almost dreamy look on his face.

Her smile widens involuntarily, so she tries to rail it back in. “I thought you’d like that.”

Bellamy arches one of his brows, giving her face a once over. “You doing things for me, that doesn’t sound like you.”

“I did a lot of things for you,” she opposes almost scoldingly, only half serious, leaning back from him with both hands resting over his shoulders. “Laugh at jokes that weren’t funny, pretend to care about the history of biology, wear really tight tops in the hope you’d notice and pretend to like that Filipino dish you tried to cook—”

“ _Hey.”_ His hands slide down to her hips, squeezing. “It was my first attempt at sinigang and I think I did okay with just Google to go on.”

“Trust me, you didn’t.”

“Now you’re just hurting my feelings.”

“Had to knock you down a peg.” Clarke’s fingers trace over the Roman letters on the inside of his bicep, just above his elbow. Her eyes map the gladiator helmet with a backdrop of an olive wreath just below, the two swords crossed beneath it, the wrap around Latin words encircling his wrist. Absent-mindedly, she muses, “I want a tattoo next thought.”

He pecks the tip of her nose, digging his thumbs into her hips. “Good thing I’m a tattoo artist then.”

“So basically I get no choice in the matter?” She jokes, teasingly, as if him marking her body doesn’t sound like the hottest thing in the fucking world to her right now. “I’m just stuck with you.”

“I own this place. It would be embarrassing if I let anyone else do any body modifications on you.”

“That claim works both ways, all I’m hearing is that I get to pierce you next.”

“If you really want to.”

She gives him a pointed look. “You’re crazy.”

“So crazy I’m offering up my dignity to take this walk of shame with you.” Bellamy reaches for her camisole, handing it to her. “Lunch? I promise I won’t try and make you eat anything I haven’t successfully cooked before.”

Clarke grins, kissing his knuckles before agreeing, “Lunch.”

┇


End file.
